Saskarö in the fog Oct 29 2021

From Monday and Thursday Annika and I made a trip that I had in mind for a longer while. Travelling round the Bothnian Bay which is the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea. The first days we travelled by car along the sea. The last hours we travelled by ship from Vaasa in Finland to Holmsund in Sweden. From there it’s only a 12½ additional km to our house in Obbola where we live.

On our way to Haparanda we made a detour to Seskarö, an island that is connected to the mainland by several bridges. As the whole day (and half our journey) it was quite foggy.

Especially by the shores there was not much to see. A near island, a bit of ice, some rocks and and a white sea merging seamlessly into the white sky.

Low tide by the sea Oct 10 2021

Low water and rainy weather. Time for some black and white images by the coast, this time round the bays Hakøybotn, Sørbotn and Mammakjosen.

Aurora hunting – failing and cheating Sep 29 2021

It’s always the same: when you wake up in the night and see the polar lights illuminating the sky it doesn’t mean, that you can take good pictures of them. In the time you need to dress, take camera and tripod and walk outside to a nice place it’s likely that they disappear again. Polar lights are shy fellows.

Last night it was the same: I saw a nice aurora from my sleeping room. But when I arrived at the bay Telegrafbukta no distinct aurora was visible anymore.

Anyhow the sky looked a bit pale. Clouds or polar lights? Let’s take a handheld photo with a long exposure. Cl… …ick.

Yes. The sky is definitely green. I set up the tripod, configure the camera and wait.

…

Nothing happens.

So I start taking a long expose shot of the sea, the mountains and the lights of Kvaløysletta.

And you can see the polar lights, at least a bit. No surprise because I exposed the photo for 30 seconds with ISO 560 and an exposure of ƒ/3.2. That puts enough light onto the sensor to catch even faint polar lights that are hardly visible to the naked eye. So this is not really an aurora photo, it’s more cheating.

Before I went back to my bed I wanted to take at least one photo with some kind of a motive. It became a shed nearby, illuminated by the moon and again with a faint polar light in the background.

A nightly motive by the sea with a faint aurora

Today I have to go to bed early, I have to catch up on sleep.

A short tour to Sørtinden Sep 26 2021

I have to admit that my motivation to go out was low this Saturday where it was grey weather with a slight drizzle that made everything damp. So this time I chose a shorter tour for my project #onceaweek.

And since the light was so dull that the autumnal colours looked pale and grey it was simple to choose a photo project: Only black and white and only rocks.

The first polar light of the season Sep 17 2021

This article is part of the series “2021-07: Back in Tromsø”.

Is the polar light shy? It was quite bright, when I peeked out of the window of my tiny room in Tromsø. It got pale when I took pictures at the bay Telegrafbukta. And it got really bright after that while I was returning home because clouds had been gathering.

Anyhow, it’s the first polar light of the season 2021/22 and therefore worth photographing.

There was another light at least as fascinating as the polar light. Plankton that was washed ashore. This plankton was bioluminescent and glowed blue-turquoise. I have a real ugly photo for the records. When this a common phenomenon I’ll try to take better photos some other time.

Two photos from a mountain tour Aug 14 2021

This article is part of the series “2021-07: Back in Tromsø”.

Two quite different photos from a mountain tour in the Tverrfjellet on Kvaløya. In opposite to the forecast the weather was very cloudy.

Photo 1 – telephoto lens, 125 mm · developed in black and white with a light shade of blue.

Photo 2 – fish eye · developed with increased color saturation.

… and when I was halfway down the sun came out and half an hour later the whole sky was blue. My knees however disagreed in the idea of hiking 500 metres up again.

Gratulerer med dagen from abroad May 17 2021

Today is syttende mai (17th of May), the Norwegian national day. On 17 May 1814 the The Constitution of Norway that declared Norway to be an independent kingdom was signed. That’s why Norway turns 207 years today. Gratulerer med dagen – Happy birthday!

The first time that I was in Norway was the turn of the year 2003/04 together with a friend. Although the weather was really miserable – storm and rain – I was so fascinated by that country, that I travelled there one month later again to find a job as a developer.

Dec 2003, Telemark: Tenting with a friend

Well, I didn’t find a job. I couldn’t speak Norwegian, didn’t have much programming experience and the dot-com bubble was still present.

2005, one and a half year later I visited Tromsø for the first time of my life after a week of hiking on the Hardangervidda. I had less than two days to discover this town but since then it has been my favourite town in Scandinavia.

Anyhow I didn’t think about moving there. The same year I had been in Northern Sweden twice and preferred the colder winters there. In addition to that I was a bit scared of mørketiden – the seven weeks in winter, where the sun stays below the horizon. Five years later I moved to Sweden.

This year however I was sure that I will be in Norway for syttende mai, since I’ve been working in Tromsø since last October.

Well, at least on the papers. Due to Covid 19 we were strongly advised to work from home, which I can better in our house in Obbola/Sweden than in my tiny room in Tromsø. On 22 November 2020 I took the plane to Oslo, another one to Stockholm and a third to Umeå. Since then I’ve been working and living home in Obbola. In five days I’ll have been here for half a year.

It feels a bit like a dream. Did I really work in the office of the Norsk Polarinstitutt in Tromsø? Together with others? Walked the 1.7 km from my shared flat? Enjoyed the first snow in the mountains? Took a kayak course?

Only when I miss my down sleeping bag (in Tromsø), my macro lens (in Tromsø), my rain parka (in Tromsø) I realise that I still have my flat there. And of course when I have to pay the monthly rent. And that’s a lot because it is ridiculously expensive to live there.

At time I’m forbidden to travel to Norway even though I have a job and a shared flat there. It’s unclear when I’ll be allowed there again. Until then I have the blog articles as memory of my two months in Tromsø to remember, the knowledge that I’ll be there again but most of all a wonderful time home.

April weather – kayaking through the snow Apr 12 2021

Yesterday the whole day was sunny. The sun was warm enough that we could take breakfast on the terrace. At lunch time we took a bath at Vitskärtsudden. Of course the water temperature is hardly above zero, but it felt springlike to go barefoot over the sand of the beach. Yes – sand, no more ice or snow!

Today however:

In the morning it has started snowing and since then it has been constantly snowing at temperatures round 0.3 °C. A good opportunity for …

… kayaking! Although wind had become stronger the Baltic Sea still was calm. Maybe it was the snow, that created a wet blanket of slush and made parts of the surface slow and doughy, but that I don’t know.

I just took a tour round Lillskär, but took some photos with my Nikon. That took time, because each time I took photos the wind blew me back 50 to 100 metres again. But as I said, the water was calm and it didn’t took long to round the island, cross a field of floating slush, disturb some geese and return home.

Short experiences can be great and memorable experiences!

A photo from the afternoon – still snowing. The original photo looked almost black-and-white and so I made this composition completely black-and-white with a slide blueish tone.

The background: a line of trees, dimmed by the intense snow fall. The middle layer: A line of rocks in the sea, covered with snow. The foreground: The sea, covered with a layer of slush.

April weather by the sea Apr 9 2021

Yesterday at lunch break: The sky is blue and the sun illuminates our little bay. After last nights frost it is still covered with fragile, transparent ice. I stand ashore and take a photo of some ice floes. The inner part of the bay behind me is still covered with thick, old winter ice you can walk on.

Today at lunch break: The weather forecast of SMHI was right: a hard and gusty wind drives wet snow from the sea. The water level is more than 60 cm over normal. (Remember: no tides in the Baltic Sea). The breaking waves have broken all the ice that yesterday still covered the bay and wash the ice floes ashore.

Impossible to make a photo without spray on the lens! Therefore you can see some pale bubbles on the photos.

I stepped from one large ice floe to the other. They float and move under my feet, they raise and fall with the waves but they are still stable enough to bear my weight.

And so looks our house from the middle of our bay Grundviken:

Time to show some more abstract black and white images that I made today. One of the wooden barrel (or whatever it is), almost covered by the sea. Another one of the snow bucketing down from the low hanging clouds.

Black and white weather Mar 29 2021

+1 °C, grey and hazy with some rainy showers. I ignore the weather and go out for a longer walk. Time to put a black and white film in the iPhone.